


Always Like You

by likehandlingroses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: When Molly and Lucy are sent home early from their Muggle primary school, it is up to Percy to find out what could possibly have caused both of them to misbehave at once.





	Always Like You

It was never a good thing to find Audrey waiting on the porch for Percy to come home. Never a good thing at all...even when they’d first began dating, she was the sort to act surprised when six thirty came around and he knocked on her door. It was charming, entirely charming...and a great help in lowering Percy’s expectations when she _did_ anticipate his arrival.

Even without her standing there, hands on her hips, Percy had anticipated trouble upon coming home. She’d sent an owl in the early afternoon telling him not to worry, but that she’d had to pick the girls up from school early. In trouble, she’d said. Both of them.

“I came home as soon as I could,” he said before giving her a peck on the cheek. “Melvin Stackes from the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office is proposing new limits on Portkeys...no recyclables, he says. Muggles are picking them up. I told him it’s the first time I’ve been made aware of such a problem, and he told me it was happening in the United States. So I send in a letter to Eliza Herrington--lovely woman, first female to head Transportation over there, it’s quite embarrassing, but then the Americans have always...what _is_ that noise?”

He’d been greeted by a grating, whirring sound upon entering the house, and Audrey sighed.

  
“Oh, you noticed?” she said, shutting the door behind them. “That’s your daughter. She’s been making the blender go on and off from up in her room all afternoon, and I can’t stop her from doing it.”

“It’s probably an accident, Audrey. You know, young children with their magic…”

“Oh really? And was Molly shouting at me a side effect of her magic as well?”

Percy blinked, astonished. “Molly shouted?”

“The whole ride back from school,” Audrey said, and Percy heard the blender click off. “As though it were my fault she got in trouble. And you might as well know: I told them both we aren’t going to your parents’ house tonight.”

“Oh.”

Audrey frowned. “You think it was too much?”

“No, no…” Percy said, though privately he wasn’t sure whether that was the truth. He didn’t even know what they’d done, after all. Could it really have been as bad as all that?  “Only I think it’s really time we looked at a different school. Molly is clearly unhappy there--”

“Molly isn’t unhappy because of the school, Percy,” Audrey said, walking towards the now quiet kitchen. “She’s unhappy because she hasn’t learned to deal with the fact that not everyone can be as quick as her. And she needs to learn it. She’s getting too old for this routine.”

She poured Percy a cup of coffee and handed it to him. Percy was too engrossed by the conversation to point out to her that he was trying not to drink coffee after five any more.

“Nine isn’t very old,” he pointed out.

Audrey--who had poured her own coffee out near to the edge of her mug, raised an eyebrow.

“In two years, you want to send her off to magic school, where she can do whatever she wants to whoever she wants--”

“--that’s not really how it works--”

“--I know,” Audrey said, closing her eyes. “I know there are rules. But it’s still more than anything I’ve ever had to deal with. Changing memories, making things turn into other things...you take it for granted, but those things are massive, Percy. Massive. And she can’t go around thinking she can do whatever she wants because she’s cleverer than most people.”

Percy nodded, setting down his cup.

“Of course not. I’ll talk to her.”

He climbed the stairs up to Molly’s room, but before he could reach it, he heard Lucy’s voice coming from the doorway he’d just passed.

“Daddy!” she cried out, her door swung open and her toes carefully still within the boundaries of her room. “Daddy, I want to talk to you, please!”

Lucy was only just coming into the realization that the word “please” didn’t function as a sort of magical summons; thankfully, the knowledge hadn’t yet deterred her from using the word dutifully, which Percy considered a great success.

“Give me one moment,” he said. “I’m talking to your sister first.”

Lucy leaned even further out of her doorway.

“I said please may I go first? Molly doesn’t want to, even. I’ll bet she doesn’t.”

It occurred to Percy that Lucy was the very best person to get the truth from. She was honest to a fault--even for a six year old--and it would probably be best to go to Molly armed with as much information as possible.

“Very well,” he agreed, turning away from Molly’s door.

“Thank you!” Lucy said, spinning back in the direction of her room with gusto. She led the way into her room and jumped up on her bed, patting the seat beside her. You wouldn’t have known she was in trouble at all, from her grin. Then again, Lucy wasn’t given to sulking.

Percy settled down next to her before speaking, trying his very best to look quite serious.

“Would you like to tell me why your mother was called away from work to take you home from school early?”

“Yes,” Lucy said without hesitation. “We went over the fence to get sweets because Molly had some money from Mummy.”

Percy’s eyes widened. “Over the—but how did...never mind.”

“We used magic, but that part’s a secret, right?”

“Yes,” Percy managed. “Yes, it absolutely is.”

Lucy nodded conspiratorially and pushed up her glasses. “Well, you’ll have to tell Mrs. Whitton because she didn’t believe us that it was a secret. She asked and asked and oh my _goodness_ it was quite an event.”

Percy decided to leave aside the possibility of whether he’d need to visit Mrs. Whitton with a memory charm any time soon.

“Lucy, may I ask why you and your sister thought it was a good idea to leave school on your own to buy sweets?”

Lucy, still looking entirely unbothered by the whole situation, thought for a moment.

“I think it was because Molly wanted to get some before we went to Grandma’s and Granddad’s.”

She gave Percy an expectant look, and Percy suddenly knew why she was so cheerful.

“Well, now no one’s going to Grandma’s at all tonight,” he said. Sure enough, Lucy’s face fell in an instant.

“What?!” she cried out, flopping back onto her mattress and giving a sort of non-committal whine.

“Don’t put on a face as though your mother didn’t tell you already,” Percy said, and Lucy sat back up on her elbows in shock. “What you did was wrong; you know better than to go somewhere alone like that. Especially when you’re supposed to be in school.”

“But Daddy, I want to go! Can I please if I’m very sorry?”

Percy hated to say no. He thought he’d be better at it, when Audrey had been expecting. But he hated it every time. Still, you couldn’t undermine what one parent had done. If Audrey had said they weren’t going, they weren’t going.

“If you behave yourself, I’m sure Grandma and Granddad would be happy to have us over tomorrow,” he said. “But tonight we’re staying in.”

“But--”

“No more of those, thank you very much.”

Lucy looked as though she was pondering her next move very seriously, and in spite of himself, Percy smiled at how her eyes narrowed and her toes curled up in concentration.

“I won’t be able to eat probably if I don’t go to see Grandma and Granddad,” she finally said, looking right up at Percy.

Percy nodded.

“Then you’ll be going to bed quite hungry, won’t you?”

“Yes, I will be very, very hungry,” Lucy said, looking sadly down at her hands. “All night and even the next morning, I think.”

“That’s a shame,” Percy said. “Though I suppose it means I’ll have two plates.”

Lucy snorted and looked back up at him.

“And two forks!” she exclaimed. “And you’ll have to eat it like this…”

She mimed trying to eat with a fork in both hands, breaking out into giggles every time she switched from one to the other.

“My goodness, you’re right,” Percy said. “It seems to me it’d be easier if you just had your plate as usual.”

Lucy let the last of her laughter subside before considering her father. She sat up on her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Can I read you some of my book after dinner if I eat?” she said, taking her final stand of the evening. And Percy knew they’d both won.

“You may read to me either way,” he agreed. “But I think you’ll find it much easier to read on a full stomach. Don’t you think?”

Lucy nodded, and Percy pressed his forehead against hers before kissing the top of her head.

“Now it’s Molly’s turn,” Lucy said cheerfully. “Be careful, Daddy. She is not very happy at _all_.”

As usual, Lucy’s candidness proved to be a fair measure of things. Molly was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling blankly. She half turned her head to the side when Percy walked in.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong?” Percy said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “Are you quite sure that’s your assessment of the situation?”

Molly sat up, her face stony.

“It’s only against the rules to leave because we might get hurt or lost or something,” she said. “But we aren’t Muggles.”

“So you can’t be hurt?” Percy retorted.

“Not as easy! Don’t lie and say it’s not true because I know it is.”

She was angry, Percy realized. Really and truly angry. At him? At Audrey? At everyone? He didn’t know.

“It is true that you have certain...protections most children don’t have,” he said carefully. “But you have to understand, Molly, that they aren’t infallible. You know what that means?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “But it was only across the road a bit.”

“They didn’t know that,” Percy said. “No one knew where you were. And it’s not fair to all those people taking care of you. It’s certainly not fair to your mother, who was frightened out of her wits when she heard...you have to take care of other people’s feelings.”

Molly stared down at her hands, but in a very different way from Lucy’s performance a few minutes ago. Percy felt some relief, some sense that she understood what he was saying.

“I just get bored at school,” she finally said, not looking at Percy. “It takes forever for everyone to get done, and they make me wait around until they do. And I hate it.”

Percy wanted to reassure her, to tell her that he understood...but he’d told her those things before. Many times. Perhaps Audrey was right.

“And how does leaving in the middle of the day solve any of that?” he asked.

Molly shrugged. “It’s something fun, at least.”

“Are you having very much fun right now?”

“No…”

“Well, there you have it,” Percy said quietly.

“I heard Mum talking to you,” Molly said, a catch in her voice. “I didn’t mean to; I just did.”

Before Percy could manage anything but an “oh,” Molly had burst into tears. The silent, shoulder shaking sort that broke Percy’s heart.

“Darling, don’t...come here.”

Thankfully, Molly let him pull her into his arms, clutching at the back of his robes and sobbing into his chest.

“It’s going to be just fine,” he whispered. “Everything’s fine. I promise you that.”

He kept saying it, over and over, not knowing what else to do. After a few minutes, Molly’s sobs turned into sniffles, at which point Percy pulled out his handkerchief. But Molly didn’t take it straight away, pulling away from her father and looking him in the eye.

“You wouldn’t let me go to Hogwarts if I was going to be a bad witch, would you?” she asked, and Percy’s heart sank.

“I most certainly would not,” he said, pressing the handkerchief into her hands. “And you’re not a bad anything.”

Molly wiped her eyes.

“Sometimes I am bad,” she said.

Percy shook his head. “Sometimes you make mistakes or poor decisions. That doesn’t make you bad. Everyone on this earth makes mistakes every day. Goodness knows I do.”

He took the handkerchief back from Molly and pocketed it.

“Why, just today,” he continued, “I was short with someone for not sending me a report--it turns out they had sent it over three days ago, and I’d put a file right on top of it. That’s three days wasted on a project, and then I had to go and apologize for telling someone else they hadn’t done their job. I was embarrassed as anything, but it’s all mended and things move on.”

Molly looked unconvinced.

“But you’re good at most things usually, so they couldn’t get very angry, could they?” she said. “But what if I do too many things wrong, and nobody likes me?”

“I’ll always like you.”

“I know that…” Molly said with a smile.

“I’m glad. Now, do you intend to stay up here bemoaning your fate as someone who has now received a total of one punishment in her entire school career?”

Audrey’s voice carried up the stairs--she must have called her sister--and the light in Molly’s eyes faded.

“It won’t get any easier the longer you stay up here,” Percy said.

Molly took a deep breath and stood up.

“Will you come with me?”

And Percy didn’t need to say anything for them both to know that of course he would.

  
  
  



End file.
